Razer
by pollywantsa
Summary: Secrets. We all have them. But as Brains is soon to learn, nothing stays secret forever… TV-verse.
1. Chapter 1

**Razer**

* * *

Part One

* * *

Scott Tracy never dreamed that flying could bore him. But somehow, today, the monotonous grey of sky and land, and the sedate pace at which _Tracy 2_ was coasting above the southern reaches of Russia, had lulled him almost to somnolence.

He cranked the air-conditioning up a notch and inhaled the cool stream of air that funnelled into the cabin, roved his eyes across the landscape that passed below. The tundra was pockmarked with the scars of rocket strikes and mortar holes, the visible remains of how close the war had come to taking out the territories of Russia. Scott stifled a twinge of remorse. It was probable he'd made some of those scars himself, during his time patrolling the Russian borderzone – the exact same zone the _Tracy 2 _was now skirting uncomfortably along. He and Brains had one more stop before they could turn for home, in Kemerovo, just a bit too close to the Berezhni border for Scott's liking. And, despite the ceasefire, it hadn't escaped his notice that the Russians were just as wary as he was. They might not have mentioned the elephant in the room, but they'd requisitioned eight of Tracy Corps' armoured air-transport carriers, which indicated to Scott that they could at least smell the beast.

Scott shook his head, tried to clear the fog from a brain that was dulled through lack of caffeine. He'd have killed for a coffee right now. Would have happily sucked back a pack of NoDoze if it meant he'd be less bleary-eyed when he and Brains landed to inspect the manufacturing plant. He blinked through eyes gritted from not enough sleep, shuddered at the thought of spending another cold night in another two-star hotel that reeked of cabbage and crawled with what passed for cockroaches in this part of the world.

'Brains,' he said out loud. 'Did Tin-Tin manage to book a hotel in Kemerovo?'

Brains roused drowsily from his contemplation of the monotonous scenery below. 'She, ah, said she did.' He rifled around the cabin for the paper he'd written the name of the hotel on. 'But you know Tin-Tin doesn't speak, ah, Russian, very well.'

Scott smiled at the memory of their previous night in Kiev, and the expression on Brains' face when he'd glimpsed the only bed in what was supposed to be a twin suite.

'Here it is.' Brains smoothed the paper against his thigh and squinted down at his untidy scrawl. 'The, ah, Ogorod.'

'Even the name smells like cabbage.'

'What?'

'Nothing.' Scott nodded towards note. 'What else did she say?'

Brains brought his scribbling closer to his face. 'She said that, ah, that a driver would be waiting for us at the a-airport.'

'Let's hope that this time he knows where he's going.'

'W-what makes you think that he's, ah, that he's a he?'

Scott snorted lightly. 'Don't get my hopes up.' His lips quirked at his memories of Russian women. 'It would be – hold on.'

The comms system activated with a burst of static, followed by a woman speaking English with a heavy Russian accent.

'Speak of the devil.' Scott grinned wolfishly as a surge of adrenaline lifted the fog from his brain. Amazing what the sound of a Russian accent could still do to him. _And the thicker,_ his toes curled inside his boots, _the better._

'Omsk airfield calling aircraft ident tango zero nine two,' the voice said dispassionately. 'You have entered restricted air space. Request you alter heading zero eight four.'

'Restricted airspace?' The grin fell from Scott's face as he entered the new coordinates into the nav computer.

Brains turned to stare at the featureless terrain below. 'I thought we were still over, ah, Russia?'

'We are.' Scott sat back as the computer plotted the new course, frowning as the display refreshed. 'That can't be right. They're asking us to divert _in_ to a restricted zone, not out of one.'

The voice burst through the comms again, dull and robotic. 'This is Omsk field calling aircraft ident tango zero – '

'Tango zero nine two to Omsk airfield,' Scott cut in. 'Request confirm new coordinates zero eight four from this position.'

A burst of static entered the cockpit, followed by the announcer's thick accent. 'Confirm. Zero eight four from current position.'

'Omsk airfield,' Scott said, 'we cannot divert into Berezhni territory. Request alternate heading.'

'Omsk airfield repeating header zero eight four. Please divert.'

Scott's eyebrows knit together as he scanned the sky ahead of them. Visibility outside the cockpit was poor, a flat band of cumulus stretching from horizon to horizon, haze bunched up sullenly beneath the unmoving cloud. Below them the ground was equally sullen, a flat patchwork dotted with stretches of brown grass and unmelted snow. Signs of habitation were rare, and more than once Brains had commented how isolated life must be for the occupants of the dwellings that occasionally passed below. But now Scott could see nothing. No houses. No signs of human occupation. An endless, monotonous, no-man's land.

Brains leaned forward to examine the nav display. 'W-what are you going to do?'

Scott's focus returned to the far horizon. 'What I'm not going to do is divert onto that heading. I'm going to – _shit!' _He broke off as a Sukho 43 broke out of the featureless band of cloud and shot past the _Tracy 2,_ close enough for the fighter plane's backwash to buffet the small craft violently.

'Shit,' Scott said again as he fought to keep the plane steady. 'Brains, are you buckled in?'

'Of course.' Brains' hands grasped reflexively for a hold against the inside of the fuselage. 'What's ha-happening?'

'I have no idea.' Scott twisted in his seat, unable to maintain a visual of the fast-moving Sukho as it tracked against the glare of the cloud. He twisted back in the other direction, craning his neck to see if the fighter was returning to their position**.**

'Scott!' Brains pointed towards 12 o'clock.

Scott turned to see two more Sukhos descending from the cloud and barrelling directly towards them. 'What the hell is going on?' He toggled the comms channel open. 'Omsk airfield, this is tango zero nine two. We are under attack. Repeat: we are under attack.'

The oncoming Sukhos split formation and roared around the _Tracy 2 _at high speed, the dual backwash buffeting the plane violently. 'Repeat,' Scott broadcast as he struggled to keep the aircraft level. 'We are under attack. Mayday. Mayday!'

A male voice issued calmly from the comms. 'Please divert to header zero eight four.'

Scott looked up to see the Sukhos regrouping against the glare of the sky. 'This is tango zero nine two repeating mayday. Please acknowledge.'

The voice returned, methodic and dull. 'Please divert to header zero eight four.'

Brains leant forward at the unfamiliar voice and tapped the comms panel. 'Scott,' he said after a few seconds. 'Frequency shift. We-we're no longer talking to Omsk field.'

Scott glanced sideways at Brains as he banked the _Tracy 2_ sharply and aimed her back towards the heart of Russia. 'Then hold on. This could get rough.'

Brains tightened his grip and shrank deeper into his seat.

Scott came out of the steep bank, looked back to see the three Sukhos had entered combat formation and were now tailing him.

'Now what,' he muttered as they once again broke formation, two of them splitting up and circling around him. They passed at high speed across the _Tracy 2's_ nose, forcing the aircraft to abruptly drop altitude. Scott spun the craft out of the dive, dimly aware of Brains struggling with the extra G's in the seat beside him. No sooner had he levelled out than the third Sukho came up on the starboard wing, forcing Scott to bank again and sending the _Tracy 2_ in the opposite direction, straight back towards Berezhni territory.

'Brains,' Scott said. 'Get Father on the comms. Now.'

_Tracy 2_ was a civilian aircraft, a means of getting from point A to point B. She was not equipped with anti-aircraft defences, and not suited to high-speed manoeuvring. The Sukho 43s might be well over a decade old, but Scott knew he had no hope of outrunning three of them, let alone evading any weaponry they might send his way.

'Father,' he said as soon as Brains signalled he had a connection. 'We're under attack.'

As if to illustrate the point, a missile hit them from behind, grazed across the wing of _Tracy 2_ and sent a plume of black smoke out to stain the white sky.

* * *

'Say again, Scott.' Jeff Tracy stared at the metal speaker grill, willed anything else to come out of it other than what he'd just heard. Anything. _Just not…_

'Repeating: we are under attack.'

…_not that._

'Father? Are you reading me?'

'Yes. I'm reading you.' The pen fell from Jeff's fingers and rolled beneath the contracts that lay unsigned across his desk. 'Tell me what's happening.'

'We have been engaged by three Sukho 43s, Berezhni colours.' There was no hint of panic in Scott's disembodied voice. Only cool, calm efficiency – five years of front-line service reasserting itself in the blink of an eye. 'We've sustained damage to the port wing and are being forced into Berezhni territory.'

Jeff opened a connection to _Thunderbird Five._ 'Alan, get a fix on _Tracy 2's_ transponder.' Jeff watched from the corner of his eye as Virgil rose from his seat at the piano. 'Scott, have you tried evasive?'

'They're one step ahead of us. I can't see any way out of this.'

'I have it, Father.' Alan's face appeared on the portrait feed from_ Thunderbird Five. _'Seven kilometres from the restricted territories. Any minute now and communications will be lost.'

'Alan, use what you've got to plot all possible trajectories.' Jeff glanced up as Gordon and John entered the lounge, looked away from the apprehension in their eyes. 'Scott… how long?'

'At the rate we're bleeding fuel…I estimate ten minutes. Less.'

Jeff stared at his desk, at the paperwork draped untidily across the polished timber, the print on the pages merging into a meaningless black and white blur.

'Father,' Scott said, his voice laden with meaning. 'We're going down.'

'Son.' The blood drained from Jeff's face. 'I'll do whatever it takes to find you.'

The console cut off, a blinking red light signalling the connection had been lost.

'Whatever it takes,' Jeff said into the dead air.

* * *

Scott brought the _Tracy 2_ down hard, bumped her across the uneven field and powered down his only remaining engine. He watched as the first of the Sukhos taxied across the snow-powdered grass and came to a slow stop, nose-to-nose with the _Tracy 2_. Close enough that Scott could see paint flaking from the scrapes on the pilot's helmet.

'What now?' Brains watched as a second Sukho descended towards the field.

'I don't know,' Scott said as the pilot that had forced them down slid from his cockpit and walked the short distance between the two aircraft, hefted a pistol in his hand and aimed it directly at them. 'But my guess is they're going to want us to get out.'

'A-and then what?'

The second Sukho taxied across the empty field to box them in. The canopy slid open and the pilot clambered out, aimed another weapon in their direction. Both pilots' faces remained concealed by their helmet visors, their bodies clad in the distinctive gunmetal grey flying suits of the Berezhni Air Force. The suits were the same colour as the Sukhos, the only difference being the blood-red flag of Berezhnia that adorned the flanks of the aircraft, and the number of kills proudly displayed beneath the cockpits.

Scott twisted in his seat to study the damage to _Tracy 2s _wing, knew he'd been in the hands of experts.

The third Sukho buzzed the perimeter of the field then shot off deeper into Berezhni territory. Scott spared a brief glance as it arced overhead and disappeared into the distance.

'I guess it's time to get out,' he said as the first pilot indicated with his weapon that the occupants of the _Tracy 2_ needed to disembark.

'No,' Brains said, fear rising in his voice. 'W-we can't!'

'We always knew this day was going to come.' Scott turned and looked Brains in the eye. 'We couldn't get away with it forever.'


	2. Chapter 2

**Razer**

* * *

Part Two

* * *

Jeff gritted his teeth, felt the muscle behind his eye twitch. 'I don't care what it takes, Corporal. You get me Strategic Air Command on the line, _now_!'

He kept the phone close to his ear, his eyes glued to the _Thunderbird Five_ feed that showed where the transponder of _Tracy 2_ had passed over the border to Berezhnia and disappeared into the Blind Zone. Jeff glanced up, caught the look in Gordon's eyes.

_Shit._

He returned his attention to _Tracy 2_'s last known fix. Over the connection he heard a series of clicks as his call was transferred several levels through the Pentagon.

_I swear,_ Jeff thought as his blood pressure climbed its way towards the roof, _if I hear that whiney Corporal's voice on the line one more time, I am going to explode!_

* * *

Scott slid from the cockpit, landed sure-footed on the surface of the ice-hardened field.

'I demand,' he said as Brains landed on the packed earth beside him, 'to know under what authority you have diverted a civilian aircraft into military airspace.'

The was no response from the heavily-suited pilots. No change in posture. No indication that Scott's words had been heard at all.

'I repeat,' he said, taking a step towards the nearest pilot, eyes fixed firmly on the reflective visor of the battered helmet, 'under what authority – '

'Stop.'

Scott froze at the word, risked a glance back at Brains.

'Sit.'

'Sit?' Scott returned his gaze to the visor, saw only his own face reflected there.

'Sit!' the order came again, the accent thick.

Scott shook his head. 'I don't know what you mean – _Christ!'_ The second pilot circled around behind him, aimed the sole of his boot at the back of Scott's thigh and brought him crashing to his knees on the frozen earth.

'Sit,' repeated the officer, aiming his weapon towards Brains.

Brains lowered himself carefully to his knees as the second pilot walked back around to face them. The pilot slipped a hand into his flight suit, took out a mobile device and snapped their photographs, one by one.

'Scott,' Brains said.

'I know.' Scott watched as the pilot busied himself transmitting the images.

The minute those photographs were received, they were dead men.

* * *

'I understand, General, but my son has been unlawfully diverted from civilian airspace into a military zone in an act of what can only be termed aggression, and – '

'What do you want us to do, Mr Tracy?' It was the third time General Martin Foster had asked this question.

Jeff removed his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. 'Let me explain again, General.'

'No. Let _me_ explain, one more time. We have been in contact with the Russian Air Transport Authority and there is no record of your son or his aircraft ever having been in Russia – '

'Not true. Flight plans were logged and – '

' – and there are no records with the Air Transport Authority of any such flight plans, nor of a mayday being transmitted or received.'

'General.' Jeff fought to keep his voice level. 'Despite what the authorities are telling you, my son, my chief research associate and my damned aircraft have disappeared into Berezhni territory, and I want to know _what you are going to do about it!'_

'Sir. You are asking me to end a hard-won ceasefire to find one man.' Foster made no attempt to hide the irritation in his voice.

'Two men, General,' Jeff reminded. 'United States citizens. One of whom happens to be my son.'

'Mr Tracy.' The general paused, made sure that Jeff was paying careful attention. 'I understand how distressing this must be for you, but in the absence of anything more concrete, the Government is not in a position to assist you at this time.'

'I see. Is that your final word?'

'It is.'

Jeff lowered his eyes, listened as Foster rustled paper on the other end of the line.

'Goodbye, General.'

'Tracy, listen,' Foster added as Jeff leant in to cut the connection. 'We'll contact you if – '

* * *

Scott knelt on the packed earth, hands resting uncomfortably on his head. His shoulders had cramped twenty minutes ago, the blood long since drained from his frozen hands and fingers. He shifted on his knees as mud and water wicked its way into his jeans, the wind from the tundra lifting the shirt from his body and running ice-cold fingers over his exposed skin.

He looked sideways, saw that Brains' lips had turned blue. 'Brains,' he hissed, his own lips cold and numb.

'Stop.' One of the pilots took a threatening step towards him.

Scott turned back and stared into the reflective visor. 'Look,' he said with all the authority he could muster, despite the tremor that the wind raked intermittently through his body. 'How long is this going to go on?' He shifted again on his knees, made as if to stand.

'Stop.' A weapon aimed towards his head and Scott sank back onto the freezing earth. He blinked in the wind, cocked his head as the drumbeat hum of rotors sounded on the air. Scott squinted into the glare, eyes drawn to the black speck of a helicarrier as it streaked directly towards them.

* * *

'What did he say?' Gordon was the first to break the silence.

Jeff stared unseeing at the paperwork piled on his desk. The Berezhni conflict had been going on for so long that the world barely remembered what it was about. Old news that rarely hit the vidcasts anymore, despite the fact that lives were being lost on the borderzones daily, and that billions of dollars better spent elsewhere were still being thrown into a pointless offensive. And now here the war was, right in his face.

Thrown right into Jeff Tracy's lap.

'Father?'

Jeff slammed his hands to the desk and wiped every item from its surface in one fell swoop. Paperwork crumpled to the parquetry, pens shot spinning across the floor, a half-empty cup exploded into shards of coffee-stained ceramic.

Gordon calmly dodged the splintering cup and took a step towards the desk. 'Dad. What did the General say?'

Jeff raised his head, steadied his breathing, tamped his anger down, hard. 'He said that Berezhnia and Russia have been observing a ceasefire for the last eight months and that any kind of action on behalf of the United States would be considered an act of war.'

'The government doesn't consider the kidnap of United States citizens to be an act of war?' Virgil's voice rose, his temper ignited by frustration. And fear.

'He says there's no evidence Scott and Brains have been unlawfully diverted, or that they have passed over the border, or that they were even in Russia to begin with.'

One by one Jeff met the eyes of his sons. He inhaled a steadying breath, delivered the most distressing element of his conversation with Foster. 'The General suggested that if we were certain they had been in the area, that we concentrate our efforts on looking for wreckage on the Russian side of the border.'

'You're joking.'

Jeff shook his head.

'They can't just leave it like that.' Gordon stepped closer to his father, shards of ceramic splintering beneath his feet.

'This was a planned attack.' Jeff looked down at the contents of his desk, spilled across the floor. 'The Berezhnis knew what exactly what they were doing. All we can do now is wait for their demands.'

'We can't just wait to hear.' Virgil looked ready to snap. He stepped into the morass of paperwork, uncaring of the contracts that crushed beneath his feet, and slammed his hands down hard on the bare timber of Jeff's desk. 'We have to do something. _Anything!'_

Jeff flinched as Virgil's hands thumped against the woodwork, looked up and met his son's eyes. 'Let me try a couple more calls.'

* * *

The helicarrier was huge. Third generation, double rotors backed up by turbine engines that screamed above the wind, the sound piercing Scott's brain and making him duck, instinctively, as the giant machine touched down metres away from them. The downdraft tore through the frozen grass, whipped through his shirt and his hair, lifted debris from the cracks in the cold ground and hurtled it into his face. Scott observed through slitted eyes as a half-dozen soldiers spilled from the carrier doors, hunched into position beneath the spinning rotors and crabwalked carefully towards them. Weapons aimed. Weapons locked.

'Scott…' Brains said, the word torn away on the ice-cold wind.

Scott glanced at Brains, then back at the helicarrier as an officer exited the vehicle, jumping lightly from the platform onto the hard-packed earth, head turned down to avoid the backwash from the still-turning rotors. The officer moved easily, deliberately, leisurely followed the soldiers towards them, waited patiently as Scott and Brains were hoisted to their feet. Only then, when Scott and Brains stood wavering in the wind, with the muscles burning in their thighs and shoulders and their nerves screaming with the effort of remaining upright after so long cramped down on the hard cold ground, did the officer lift his head, revealed a moustachioed face, heavy features, skin that hadn't seen the sun for a very long time.

'Let me introduce myself.' The moustachioed man shoved his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat, pulled the garment close around him as his boots dug into the icy ground. 'I am General Goran Tereshchenko.'

'Tereshchenko?' Scott stared, eyes searching the big man's face.'You're supposed to be – '

Tereshchenko's lips twitched as a soldier stepped forward and cracked Scott in the face with the butt of his machine gun, sent him reeling backwards, stumbling, as another blow caught him from behind and collapsed him onto the frozen earth.

'Well, well,' said Tereshchenko when the commotion had subsided. 'The mad scientist and the billionaire's son.' He looked down to where Scott lay sprawled on the ground. 'An interesting, and somewhat unexpected, combination.'

Brains followed Tereshchenko's gaze. 'W-what have you done?' he asked, hoped his stutter didn't betray his terror.

Tereshchenko shrugged. 'His welfare is not important,' he replied in thickly accented English. 'Not nearly as important as _yours_.'

'I… I-I…' Brains swallowed thickly. Looked up and met Tereshchenko's unwavering gaze. 'I-I'm not who you think I a-am.'

'We shall see.' Tereshchenko raised a finger into the air.

Immediately a soldier clamped Brains' head between two huge, hot hands, while a second operative manhandled his left eye painfully open. A laser beam hit his eye, streamed a blue line across the surface of his retina. For a moment Brains was blinded, his whole world bathed ice-cold in blue. He flinched at the beam, jerked his head back against the ham-fists that held it steady. 'I-I'm not,' he repeated futilely as the scanner fell away and the soldier presented the readout for the General's scrutiny.

'Hmm.' Tereshchenko studied the display. 'Unless you are in the possession of a black market retina, then you are indeed who I think you are. The infamous Gary Ross. Scientific prodigy. Secret weapon of the United States Government. Developer of Project Razer.'

Tereshchenko stepped closer and stroked his moustache thoughtfully. 'Tell me, Dr Ross, where have you been hiding? Don't you know the entire world has been looking for you? And most especially,' he added dangerously, 'for Project Razer?'


	3. Chapter 3

**Razer**

* * *

Part Three

* * *

'What have you got for me, Tim?'

Jeff sat forward in his chair as the face of his old Air Force buddy appeared on the screen. He'd been sweating on this call for thirty minutes, knowing that every second that ticked away while he sat on his ass was another second that Scott and Brains had lost forever… if Scott and Brains were even still… Jeff's brain closed on the thought, a wall coming down, a speculative path he was not yet willing to take.

'Unofficially, Jeff,' Casey leaned in close to the vid screen, 'we heard rumblings that three Berezhni Sukhos had been tracked inside the Russian no-fly zone at eleven hundred local time. By the time forces had scrambled to intercept, the bogies were gone.'

'Along with my son.'

Casey looked morosely at Jeff through the connection. 'As long as the Russian authorities maintain their story, you can't prove a thing.'

'Jesus, Tim. I'm being stonewalled at every turn. It's like Scott and Brains have disappeared off the face of the planet.'

'If they've gone over that border, Jeff, they may as well be on Mars.'

Jeff's heart sank in his chest. He glanced up and met the searching eyes of his sons, then looked back at Tim Casey, his friend's face lined with age. Knew his own face must have been just as lined. Just as aged. _When did we both get so old?_

'So there's nothing you can do?'

'Sorry, Jeff. My hands are tied.'

Jeff stared at the screen, at the apologetic face of his friend. 'I understand, Tim. We're on our own.'

Tim Casey blinked through the screen, watched as something dark rose in Jeff's eyes. 'Just don't do anything stupid.'

* * *

'…hey…'

Scott slumped back against the cell wall, in the exact same place they'd dumped him when they dragged him in. He saw nothing in the darkness. Heard nothing. Felt only cold stone at his back and the dampness of the floor beneath his jeans. He pressed a hand against his swollen mouth, fingered the crusted cut to his lip.

'Brains?' he croaked into the darkness, waited thirty seconds for a reply that didn't come.

'Hey,' he said again, louder, heard nothing but the sound of insects scuttling across the cement floor.

They'd left him.

_Dumped him there and left him._

He groped for his wristcom, found nothing but bare skin. Scott dropped his hand to the ground, felt water slicking cold beneath his fingers.

'Hey!' he bellowed, the cry catching in his throat as pain tore unexpectedly through his head.

_Damn._

Scott calmed his breathing, mentally assayed his body. Arms. Legs. Back. Head. Head. Headache. He explored his mouth with his tongue, relieved to find his teeth still intact.

Scott leaned his head against the stone and closed his eyes against the impenetrable blackness, tried to remember what had happened.

A machine gun had hit him in the face.

_Split lip._

Something had hit him hard from behind.

_Headache._

He'd fallen, the air knocked out of him, gasping.

_And then what?_

Dirt in his mouth. Voices, guttural and angry. His body limp and unresponsive. A bag slipped rough over his head.

He was suffocating.

_Choking._

And then what?

Nothing.

_Nothing._

* * *

Brains' eyes darted panicked around the room, bounced off the stone walls, the concrete floor, everything filthy and stained with streaks of black. Puddles of water had collected in patches on the floor, and the room stank, as though something had recently died there.

Or maybe it had died here.

Right where he was sitting.

_Right in this very chair… _

Brains licked his lips, glanced up at the single bulb in the ceiling, a tiny yellow sun that threw garish shadows across the room and haloed the top of Tereshchenko's head as he removed his coat and handed it to a waiting officer. Brains watched as the officer turned away with the coat, craned his neck to follow, glimpsed only a single closed door at his back.

Tereshchenko dragged a chair across the room, the wooden legs scraping noisily on the uneven cement. Brains flinched at the sound, turned his eyes to follow Tereshchenko's movements as the chair came to rest close beside him. _Too close. _

Brains swallowed thickly.

_Far too close._

Free of his coat, unburdened of the wool and the silk and the medals of honour that adorned the garment's surface, Tereshchenko sat down smoothly in the chair opposite Brains, knee to knee, the odour of sweat and smoke and something sickly and sweet wafting from his hair and his body and his big yellow teeth. Brains flexed himself in a last minute panic. Tried to twist his wrists free of the bindings that held them firmly to the arms of the chair, stifled a groan as the cord cut sharp into his skin.

Tereshchenko watched as Brains floundered in his chair, waited patiently until the fight had left him, pale and gasping. He loosened his tie and leaned forward, lifted a hand and removed Brains' glasses carefully from his face.

'There is no longer any need for such a clumsy disguise. Is there,' Tereshchenko leaned in close, lips quirking in a disarming smile, 'Dr Ross?'

'I-I don't know what, w-what you're talking about.' Brains recoiled from the scent of stale tobacco that laced the general's heavy breath.

'And still you deny it.' Tereshchenko continued to study him, the dark eyes roving across his face, lingering on his eyes, his mouth, the pores of his skin. 'You do not seem like a strong man, Dr Ross. My lieutenant believes you will soon be crying like a baby.' Tereshchenko leaned in closer and said, conspiratorially, 'he has made a wager that you will last only five minutes. So I am asking you, as a personal favour, to give me ten.'

Brains tried to swallow, his mouth dry, throat closing painfully on his words. 'I-I don't…' he stammered. 'P-please…'

Tereshchenko turned as the lieutenant pulled a small cloth-covered table across the room towards them, the wooden legs vibrating loudly with the movement, the sound accompanied by the unexpected clatter of metal beneath the cloth. The officer took an age to work the table across the small room, as if he understood the screech of the timber on the cement were torture enough, the noise working its way beneath Brains' skin and setting his nerves on edge. Brains observed the table's slow progress, watched as the cloth slid unexpectedly to the ground and revealed an assortment of blades, some rusted and stained, some glinting clean in the yellow light. He diverted his gaze from the gleaming metal, stared at the walls, realised abruptly that the dark streaks were old blood.

'Do you think this method old-fashioned?' Tereshchenko asked as the table came to rest inches from where Brains' hand was tied firmly to the arm of the chair. He raised the smallest blade from the table and checked its sharpness with his finger. 'Clichéd, perhaps?'

'Please…' Brains said again, closing his eyes.

Tereshchenko grasped hold of Brains' hand and inspected the nails, brought the knife in close. 'There is a reason this technique has remained so popular for so many hundreds of years. Now,' he brought the blade to Brains' thumb, slid it just beneath the nail. 'Let us see if I will win my wager.'


	4. Chapter 4

**Razer**

* * *

Part Four

* * *

'Father,' Alan said through the feed from _Thunderbird Five,_ 'I've been using _Five's_ sensors to try and find a way through the Blind Zone.'

'And?' Jeff turned his full attention towards his youngest son, not daring to hope there could be a chink in Berezhnia's impermeable armour. That the legendary Blind Zone – an interference field that curtained the entire country – could somehow be penetrated.

'We can't get through,' Alan conceded. 'There's no way. But I think I've pinpointed the field generators.' Alan's face faded from the portrait-feed, replaced by a satellite image of Berezhnia overlaid with a thermographic gradient map. 'There are seven hotspots on the thermograph,' Alan's disembodied voice accompanied the image, 'and I suspect they could be generators. _Huge_ generators.'

The image dissolved and Alan's face once more filled the screen. 'There's also an intense electromagnetic field situated exactly over each of these hotspots, indicating a high output of electrical energy. These have to be the source of the Blind Zone, and taking out one of these generators might be enough to shift the power phase out of sync and give us a sensor window in.'

John shook his head. 'The Berezhni's aren't stupid, not with technology like that at their fingertips. They'll have back-up systems online instantly to re-establish the field.'

'No question,' Alan acknowledged, 'but I figure the phase will be out of sync long enough for _Thunderbird Five_ to get a reading and pinpoint Scott and Brains' wristcoms.' Alan's eyes moved to his father. 'I'd only need a few seconds, Dad.'

John folded his arms across his chest. 'Exactly how do you propose to take out one of these generators?'

Alan's eyes slid from Jeff to John and back again. 'Brains has been working on a thorium device.'

'You're kidding.' Gordon looked up from the maps he'd been studying. 'You all know thorium is…' His voice trailed into silence.

'What?' Virgil asked.

'A restricted substance.' John glanced at Alan, surprised his youngest brother had known about Brains' latest side-project.

'And no doubt illegal.' Gordon swivelled in his chair to look at his father.

Jeff ignored Gordon's gaze, focussed his attention intently on Alan. 'Explain.'

'Thorium in a super-conductive state has been demonstrated to achieve magnetic field separation,' Alan supplied. 'Brains has been developing an EM disruptor, basically.'

Jeff's eyes narrowed as the implications became clear.

'Dad,' John said, intuiting the intent in his father's eyes. 'The device is untested. There is only one of them. And thorium is radioactive, for Christ's sake.'

Jeff ignored John's words. 'I want that device incorporated into a missile and loaded onto _Thunderbird One.'_

'And then what?' John's hands flew exasperated into the air. 'Just barge into Berezhnia and fire a missile? What if we kill people? Jesus Christ, we probably will!'

'John,' Virgil said. 'We have to do this.'

John turned to look at Virgil, said very carefully, 'have all of you gone fucking insane?'

'We have to do this,' Virgil said again, quietly, pleadingly.

John shook his head, turned away from the desperation in his brother's eyes. Looked up and met his father's unwavering gaze.

'I'm sorry son, but you're the only one on the ground with enough hours in _One_ to pull this off.'

'No.' John shook his head again, felt his limbs weaken at the thought of what his father was asking him to do. 'No. No way. Are any of you listening to yourselves? Berezhnia might be at war, _but we aren't!'_

'We _are_ at war.' Jeff's mouth set, hard. _'I _am at war. And I will do whatever it takes to end it.' He looked at John, cursed his middle son's moral conscience. 'At top speed you can be in and out before Berezhnia knows you're even there. They won't know who the aggressor is. They won't have a clue who or what hit them.'

'They will make assumptions,' John said, coldly, clearly, 'and that might be just enough to restart the conflict.'

Jeff stared into John's blue, blue eyes, wondered what twist of genetic heritage had brought this strange, pale man into his life. 'This could be our only chance of finding your brother and Brains and getting them out of there alive. John…' Jeff's voice caught, hitched on something akin to doubt. 'We have to try.'

* * *

Brains stared down at his ruined hands, pulled feebly at the ties that held his wrists to the chair, tried to move his torn fingers. He hissed in pain as the broken flesh refused to move and blood pulsed thickly to the floor.

In the early days Scott had prepared him for this. Taught him how to deal with torture. But what he had really needed, Brains thought as a fist caught him in the face and sent another rush of blood across his tongue, had been for Scott to hit him once or twice. _Really_ hit him. Maybe tear a fingernail out of its bed to give him a taste, just a taste, of the agony that could be inflicted on the human body. To show him how it burned along your nerve endings. How it became focussed, pinpoint sharp, until all of your existence became a constellation of bright, burning pain.

Another fist caught him full on the jaw, and Brains felt something inside him break.

'Stop.' Brains hung his head, felt blood pool beneath his tongue. 'Razer is gone. It's gone. I d-destroyed it.'

Tereshchenko dropped his cigarette to the floor and crushed it carefully beneath his boot. He shook his head slowly, as if debating with himself. 'I don't think so.'

'Yes.' Brains watched as a stream of blood drooled from his mouth and dripped thickly into his lap. 'I-it's true.'

'Oh, my little one.' Tereshchenko slid a hand gently into Brains' hair and held it there, comforting and warm. 'You lie. A god would never destroy his most prized creation.'

* * *

_60,000 feet and climbing._

The pressure suit was tight, but then it wasn't his. John had squeezed himself into one of Scott's old ones, the reinforced fabric restricting him around the shoulders and digging hard into his crotch. He squirmed on the seat as he rechecked his readings, silently cursed the helmet that was interfering with his field of view.

'Remember,' Jeff's voice droned into _Thunderbird One's_ cockpit, was repeated in stereo through John's helmet comms half a second out of sync, made him feel like he was trapped in a bad movie where the picture and the sound were never going to match up. Two voices, none of which he wanted to hear. A nightmare place where sanity had diverged from reality.

'The Berezhni Sukho 43 has an absolute ceiling of 64,000 feet,' Jeff continued. _'Thunderbird One_ is radar-invisible so you will be able to avoid radar detection, but if they should locate you by other means and scramble aircraft to intercept, you'll need to maintain a minimum 80,000 feet altitude to avoid a visual ID.'

_70,000 feet and climbing._

John licked his lips, lifted a hand from the control stick to run a finger across the helmet seal. _Thunderbird One_ had never sustained this kind of altitude or this kind of speed for any length of time. If there was a loss of pressure, or if he had to eject…

'Remember, John,' his father continued, 'if they see you, it's all over.'

_75,000 feet and climbing._

John peered out of the tiny viewport, watched as the edge of the earth curved away beneath him. _Thunderbird One_ hovered, weightless, at the thinnest edge of the atmosphere.

'John,' Alan's voice filtered into his helmet. 'Check altitude. You're entering Berezhni airspace.'

'Almost there.' John watched as the altimeter climbed into the red, felt the cabin pressure cycle into overdrive as the external sensors strained against the extreme conditions. 'Check tracking.'

'Surface chatter indicates you're still clear. Target in sixty seconds.'

_80,000 feet._

John locked the targeting system, poised his thumb over the firing button. 'Cross-check coordinates.'

'Coordinates confirmed.'

'_Thunderbird One.' _Jeff's voice returned through the airwaves. 'Radio silence from my mark.'

The comms died, left John with only himself and his thoughts and the laboured hiss of oxygen as it struggled through the cyclers.

His thumb twitched over the launch button as he considered how many times his eldest brother had been in exactly this situation. How many lives Scott must have taken in the course of his Air Force duties. Knew if their positions were reversed, that if Scott were up here and John were down there, that Scott would not hesitate to fire. Not for one second.

John's thumb stabbed down on the launch button. He felt the thud through _One's _fuselage as the missile separated from the launch bay, followed its trajectory on the scanner as it arced earthward. John switched the monitor to high res magnification as the missile reached its target, fifty metres above the facility that Alan had pinpointed from _Thunderbird Five, _watched as a shockwave of debris billowed silently out from the detonation point. A perfect sphere of disruption that engulfed and encapsulated the generator below.

'Okay, Alan,' John said to himself as he rolled _Thunderbird One_ on her side and made for the border. 'You've got your few seconds. Find them.'

* * *

Tereshchenko waited until Scott was secured in the chair, smiled when Scott didn't struggle, didn't test the bonds that held him. He nodded, satisfied. 'I can see you are a sensible man, Captain Tracy.' Tereshchenko rolled the word _Captain_ leisurely off his tongue, gratified to see Scott flinch at the title. 'That will make things very much easier.'

Scott stared at the big man, at the dark eyes hooded beneath the heavy brow. The globe in the ceiling highlighted the harsh angles of Tereshchenko's face, cast the general's features into grim planes of shadow and light.

'I am in a good mood today,' Tereshchenko continued when Scott didn't respond. 'A very good mood. I have won a wager. So, to celebrate,' he turned to the officer and waved him forward, 'it will be only blunt instruments for you.'

The lieutenant moved in close to Scott, slid a set of knuckledusters onto his already blood-stained hand. Flexed his fingers into a fist.

The bitter taste of adrenaline flooded Scott's mouth, sent his pulse-rate quickening, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out across his brow. He drew back as the officer moved closer, the knuckleduster glinting in the light from the single yellow bulb. The officer's fingers flexed again, live things desperate for the hot taste of pain.

'What do you want,' Scott asked, pointlessly, pulse thumping loud in his ears.

'It is simple,' Tereshchenko replied. 'I want Dr Ross to watch.'

Scott risked a glance beyond the circle of yellow light, where Brains hunkered brokenly in the shadows, then turned to eye Tereshchenko squarely. He wanted to say something, anything, wanted to show these bastards that he wasn't afraid. But his body failed him, his throat closing on the impulse, the spit drying in his mouth and leaving him staring at the big man silently as the lieutenant stepped between them.

Tereshchenko pushed his chair back, allowed the officer some room.

* * *

'John.' Alan's voice sounded loud in the cockpit. 'You're being tracked.'

John stabbed a finger at the comms. 'What happened to radio silence?'

'Too late for that. They know you're there.'

_Shit._

John stared at the radar, lips tightening at the seven targets identified at its farthest margins and closing. 'I thought this thing was radar-invisible.'

'It is. They must have locked onto your exhaust.'

John re-checked the radar, cross-checked the location of the Sukhos on his tail. 'Increasing speed,' he said, gratified to see the seven blips fall away on the radar.

Alan's voice pierced the space inside John's helmet. 'Two more targets attempting intercept.'

_What?_

John refocussed his radar, identified the two blips closing in ahead and below him. 'What's their range? Surely they can't reach this high.'

'They can't,' Alan said. 'But a missile might if they get a lock on your heat source.'

_Which means, Johnny-boy, it's just a matter of time before a missile is targeted right for your stupid ass._

_Shit._ John angled the control column, arced _Thunderbird One_ off the intercept trajectory.

'Son,' Jeff's voice cut into the cockpit. 'You can't risk a missile lock. Take her up to 90,000.'

John glanced at the control panel. 'The altimeter doesn't even go that high!'

'Then _push it!'_

_Christ! _John's fingers curled tight on the control stick as he forced _Thunderbird One's _engine past the safety margin and sent her barrelling into the upper atmosphere. The hull creaked and groaned around him, followed by a sharp pop and the sudden loss of pressure as the life-support system crashed, the external sensors no longer able to relay accurate data to the processors.

Alan,' John said, skin crawling as the gravity failed, his stomach churning with the unexpected change in equilibrium as his senses struggled to demarcate up from down. 'Eyes open for me.' He slammed the faceplate of his helmet down, activated the regulator and flooded the pressure suit with oxygen.

'Missiles locked.' Alan's voice was leaden as he relayed the inevitable. 'Launched.'

John armed the escape hatch as a precaution, felt sweat break out slick across his skin. Altitude suit or not, if _One's_ engines flamed out and he had to bail at 90,000 feet, it was going to kill him.

'John,' Jeff said, his voice tinged with urgency. 'Top speed, _now!'_

John gritted his teeth and aimed _Thunderbird One_ towards the dark space above. Screamed her protesting beyond the farthest edges of the atmosphere.

* * *

'_Stop!' _

The lieutenant halted mid-strike, dropped his balled fist to his side. Tereshchenko turned away from Scott, fixed his gaze on Brains.

'I'll t-tell you.' Brains dropped his head, stared at the patchwork of blood and water on the floor.

'Brains,' Scott slurred through bloodied lips as his head fell limply back against the chair. _'Don't.'_

'I'll tell you e-everything.' Brains looked at Tereshchenko, carefully avoided Scott's eyes. 'What Razer is, a-and where you can find it.'


	5. Chapter 5

**Razer**

* * *

Part Five

* * *

John strode into the lounge and dropped his helmet to the couch. 'We shouldn't have done it.'

'John – '

'It was a stupid idea. Pointless. _We found nothing!'_ John stood in the centre of the room, shaking, muscles trembling from an overload of adrenaline, the residue of the fight or flight that had so recently flooded his body.

'More importantly,' he said as he met his father's eyes, '_Thunderbird One_ was tracked. What if they figure out who it was? What if International Rescue is identified?'

'That won't happen,' Jeff said.

'But what if it _does?'_

'_It won't!' _Jeff shot back. 'John.' He took a steadying breath. 'It was worth a shot. We're running out of options.'

'Worth a shot? I barely made it out of there alive! We have,' John's jaw clamped down, forced his words grinding through his teeth, 'no…more…options!' He inhaled a steadying breath through his nostrils and fought against the tremor that reached deep into his bones, ignored the looks Gordon and Virgil were giving him, wound far too tight to meet their eyes. He stared at his father, at the blue-grey gaze filled with unwavering determination. And desperation. Realised there was no longer any point arguing. _Shit._

'Dad.' The defeat in Alan's voice dissipated the last of John's anger. 'During the few minutes that the field was out of phase, I found no sign of Scott or Brains' wristcoms. Either they're not in Berezhnia or their comms have been destroyed. Or both.'

Jeff turned to stare at Alan's face through the feed, clamped down tight on his frustration.

'So we're right back where we started,' Virgil said when his father didn't respond, 'with no idea which side of the border we should be looking.'

Gordon turned back to the map he had been studying. 'Alan has verified there are no signs of wreckage of any kind on the Russian side of the border. It's pretty clear Scott and Brains must have been forced into Berezhnia.'

'Is it clear?' Virgil turned on Gordon. _'Is it?'_

'Virgil.' Gordon looked up, met his brother's gaze squarely. 'You're not the only one missing a brother,' he said before turning back to his maps. 'Whoever has them,' he continued, not waiting for a response, 'they're smart. They know exactly what they're doing.'

'So we're back to waiting.' John unzipped his pressure suit and flopped wearily onto the nearest chair, ran a still-trembling hand through his sweat-dampened hair. 'Shit,' he said into the silence. 'Dad – '

The vidphone chimed, its shrill tone slicing through the air.

Jeff turned to the screen, visibly relaxed when he saw the caller ident. 'It's the office,' he said as he leaned in to accept the call. 'Just give me a minute.'

'Mr Tracy.' The face of Jeff's PA appeared on the screen. 'I have an incoming video call for you. Can I transfer – '

'Not now, Marta,' Jeff cut in. 'Hold everything until you hear from me.'

'I understand Mr Tracy, but…'

Jeff paused. It wasn't like his longstanding PA to persist against his wishes – she knew him a hell of a lot better than that. 'What is it, Marta?'

'It sounded important, Mr Tracy. The caller says it's about your interests in Berezhnia. I thought you should – '

Jeff froze. 'Who is the caller?'

'A Mr Tereshchenko.'

* * *

Scott stumbled down the first few steps, smacked roughly against the wall.

'Hey,' he said as he was shoved again and forced the rest of the way down the short flight of stairs. He fell tripping into the narrow corridor, feet catching on the damp cement, off-balance with his hands still cuffed in front of him. He collided limply with the wall, leaned against it for balance and tried to fill his lungs with air, tasted blood at the back of his throat. He coughed, glanced back to find the two guards closing in behind him.

_It was now… or never._

Scott turned on his toes and lunged for one of the guards, span away from the surprised officer with a pistol clutched tight between his shackled hands. He fired wildly towards the guards, bullets thunking uselessly into the wall and sending splinters of stone spinning through the air. The recoil sent him staggering backward, fumbling at the weapon as the second officer pulled out his pistol and let off a round.

There was a sharp crack, the crunch of metal hitting bone as the bullet caught Scott and sent him spinning, the impact slamming him into the wall as the gun clattered noisily from his grip. He blinked through the haze that rose swimming in his eyes, slid limp to the ground, grinned through bloodied teeth at the two officers as they towered over him.

The first officer grinned back, aimed a boot into his stomach.

Scott curled around the pain, coughing, choking on blood that rose thick in his lungs. He spat, felt another smile break across his face, a hint of hysteria rising in his throat.

_It had been worth a shot._

* * *

'You are a clever man, Jeff Tracy. I am impressed. The combined military might of three countries has not been enough to expose us so thoroughly. Of course,' the words were heavy and thick, weighed down by the hard consonants of the tundra, 'these days they wouldn't even try. They would be far more concerned about the political implications of such an action.'

Jeff leaned forward in his chair, enunciated his words very carefully. 'Fortunately I am not a man to let politics get in my way.'

Tereshchenko smiled, displayed his square yellow teeth. 'Did you find what you were looking for?'

Jeff's face steeled, his silence speaking volumes.

'No matter. I have what you want, Jeff Tracy. And you have something that I want, very much.'

'What could you possibly have,' Jeff leaned back in his chair, 'that I want?'

Tereshchenko leaned back in his own chair, mirrored Jeff's movements in careful parody. For a moment he studied his opponent, then reached for a sheet of paper. 'Captain Scott Tracy,' he read aloud. 'United States Air Force. Service number AF17282310. Retired.' He leaned forward suddenly, flipping the paper so that Jeff could see. A perfect facsimile of Scott's service record, replete with colour ID.

'That's just a piece of paper,' Jeff shrugged, tamping down hard on his fear. 'I'm going to need something more.'

'Hmm.' Tereshchenko flipped the paper again, studied it thoughtfully. 'During the war,' he said, slowly, thickly, 'Captain Tracy was quite active along the Russian border. The destruction of a number of our Sukho 43s have been attributed directly to his actions.' He dropped the paper and leaned in close to the monitor. 'Those planes are very expensive.'

'What,' Jeff asked evenly, 'do you want?'

Tereshchenko smiled, the thick lips barely visible beneath the heavy moustache. 'I will be willing to forego compensation for my aircraft if you hand over all material pertaining to Project Razer.'

'Razer? What's that?'

Tereshchenko's mouth twisted. 'Do you really want to play this game?'

Jeff studied the larger man's features, considered carefully. 'You promised me,' he finally said, 'something that I want.'

A smirk of satisfaction passed across Tereshchenko's face. 'Your son will be returned to you.'

'And Dr Ross?'

'There is no such person.'

Now it was Jeff's turn to smile, tight, and hard. 'I see.' He leaned in close to the monitor. 'Unfortunately neither of us can provide something that doesn't exist.'

Tereshchenko's smirk disappeared. There was the sound of scuffling, a barked order in Berezhni, and Brains' face appeared, grainy on the monitor.

Jeff stared at the screen, at Brains' swollen face, the slash of red that sliced vertically through both lips, the gouge that crusted deep across his cheek. Another order was barked, and there was the sound of something heavy thumping dully against flesh. Brains flinched, blinked his bruised eyes.

'M-Mr Tracy,' he said, swallowing. 'I'm sorry…'

Jeff said nothing. Didn't trust himself.

'They want… they want…' The words croaked painfully from Brain's torn mouth, the split in his lip reopening and loosening a thin flow of blood.

'I know what they want,' Jeff said, calmly, levelly, afraid his voice might break.

Brains nodded, a nervous tremor as his eyes focussed on something beyond the screen. Jeff studied his friend on the monitor, watched as the battered face turned once more in his direction.

'They're going to kill us, Mr Tracy.'

The words were whispered, but they were the loudest that Jeff had ever heard. 'Then I know what I need to do.'

Their eyes met, unspoken words passing across a thousand miles of despair.

'No,' Brains said, a hint of panic rising in his voice. 'You can't.'


	6. Chapter 6

**Razer**

* * *

Part Six

* * *

The hangar elevator was the fastest on the island, but today it seemed to take an age to drop from the villa to the hangar deck. Virgil pressed himself against the rear of the lift, mentally counted off each floor as it clicked by, stared unseeing at the back of his father's head. Beside Jeff, John stood skewed at an angle, still clad in the flight suit, his expression blank and inscrutable. Virgil opened his mouth, filled the uneasy silence with words.

'Who was that, Father?'

'General Goran Tereshchenko,' Jeff stated matter-of-factly. 'The architect of the war.'

'Tereshchenko?' Virgil's mind arced back to an old newsfeed, recalled now very vaguely. 'Isn't he dead?'

'Gone to ground, more like.' Jeff looked sideways at his son. 'Until something big enough to get him out of his foxhole came along.'

Virgil glanced at John as the elevator settled onto the deck of the hangar complex. If John was as disturbed as Virgil was at this turn of events, there was no sign of it in his posture or the unflinching line of his jaw. Virgil tensed as the doors swished softly apart, the warm air of the elevator swirling out into the cool air of the darkened cavern beyond.

'Right,' Jeff said as he stepped out of the lift. 'Virgil. Where did you last see it?'

* * *

Brains fell stumbling into the cell as the metal door clanged shut behind him, collapsed to his knees on the damp cement.

'Brains?'

'Scott?' Brains rose shakily, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the cell, a tiny window high in the wall letting in a leaden stream of light and a waft of ice-cold air. Brains looked up at the rectangular slit, saw a patch of featureless grey cloud, the kind that presaged snow.

'Are you okay?' The words were dull, slurred through Scott's swollen lips.

Brains turned from his contemplation of the world outside the window, stood shivering in the cold air.

'Sit down, Brains, before you fall down.'

'I should… I-I should…'

Scott straightened against the wall, wincing at the movement. He indicated the patch of damp ground beside him with his eyes. _Sit._

Brains shuffled the few steps towards him, leaned defeated against the stonework. 'Scott,' he said as he slid down the wall to sit beside him. 'I'm sorry.'

Scott said nothing, shifted uncomfortably on the damp cement. 'Brains,' he said at last. 'I need your help.'

Brains turned to look at him.

Scott's cuffed hands fell from his midriff and exposed his bloodied shirt. 'Bullet,' he said, grimacing. 'It's impacted on a rib. You might be able to dig it out.'

'S-Scott…' Brains lifted his bloodied hands, fingers swollen and torn.

'Shit. Brains – '

'I'm sorry, Scott.' Brains rested his hands on his thighs, palms up, swallowed hard on the moan that threatened at the back of his throat. 'I n-never meant for this to h-happen.'

Scott returned his hands to his stomach, felt the jagged edge of the bullet rising through his flesh. He cradled the wound beneath his shirt, cushioned the hurt with his fingers. 'What I don't get is how they tracked you down.'

Brains sat silent in the half-light.

'We thought of everything, Brains. _Everything._ There's no way – '

'Vasek,' Brains said, afraid to admit to Scott that his stupidity had probably killed them.

'What?' Scott's wound throbbed beneath his fingertips.

'Last year, w-when we were in Houston.'

'Houston.' Scott leaned his head against the damp wall, grunted softly as the bullet shifted beneath his skin.

'I was waiting, for you, i-in the foyer of Boeing, when I bumped into Professor Vasek. We worked together a-a few times, when I was with the WDF.' Brains turned to study Scott's face, his eyes dropping to the blood that stained Scott's shirt. 'I, ah, didn't think he recognised me. You know, with my glasses and, the, ah, haircut.'

Scott coughed, braced himself against the pain that shot pulsing from his wound.

Brains lifted the back of his hand, rubbed at the blood that had crusted on his face. He blinked his swollen eyelids, remembered the professor blinking at him in Houston, the look of confusion that had passed across the old man's face, and then the blankness of expression that followed. Brains dropped his head. 'He must have recognised who, who I was, and then p-passed on the information.'

'Vasek,' Scott repeated. 'I know him. He tried to sell us a patent for zero point energy that could be used for space travel.' Scott's hands shifted beneath his shirt, blood congealing warm around his fingers. 'He was persistent, from what I remember.' He slid a finger into the tear in his flesh, groped for the blunt end of the bullet amongst the jagged shards of bone.

'He was a-always persistent. A-and he was always desperate. I didn't have much to do with him, but, ah, I didn't like him.' Brains fell silent, remembering the stink of madness that seemed to follow Vasek like an invisible cloud.

Scott sucked air through his teeth as his fingers closed on metal. 'Why didn't you say anything when we were in Houston?' He scraped the bullet from the bone, said, gasping, 'why didn't you tell me?'

'It's been nine years, Scott.' Brains stared down at the palms of his hands, at the blood crusted black in the creases. 'I was so different then, I was just a-a kid. I, I didn't think anybody w-would recognise me... didn't think anybody was still, still looking.'

Scott raised the bullet in the feeble light, dropped it listlessly to the floor. Brains started at the sound, watched as the bullet fell ringing to the cement.

Scott closed his eyes, said wearily, 'somebody will always be looking.'

Brains looked away from the bullet in its tiny puddle of blood. 'I'm so thirsty.' He glanced towards the bolted door. 'Do you think…'

Scott shook his head and bunched his shirt to staunch the bleeding. 'I've been in this hotel a while now, and the room service is lousy.'

* * *

'So,' Virgil said as they walked towards the storage bays, unable to keep his silence any longer. 'Since when did Brains go by the name Gary Ross? I always thought his name was Hackenbacker.'

'No,' Jeff replied. 'Hackenbacker is an alias. An alias on top of an alias.'

Virgil glanced at John, questioning. _Did you know?_

John responded with a shake of his head. 'Dad, are you telling us that Brains is Gary Ross? _The_ Gary Ross?'

Jeff halted at the far end of a series of containment bays. 'Which one, Virgil.'

'Bay Two,' Virgil replied, then added, 'Who is Gary Ross?'

'C'mon, Virg,' John said as Jeff keyed the bay door open. 'Remember? In 2019 at the height of the Berezhni conflict, all sorts of rumours came out that the US had developed a new weapon. One that would end the war as decisively as Little Boy ended World War Two.'

'But that never happened,' Virgil pointed the way towards the far end of the containment area. 'There was no such weapon, and the conflict never ended.'

'That's because the weapon and its designer disappeared. The designer was supposed to be Gary Ross.'

'And the weapon,' Jeff added, 'was codenamed Project Razer.'

John and Virgil came to an abrupt halt.

'There really _was_ such a weapon?' John asked, his words tinged with surprise.

Jeff nodded. 'And the only surviving piece of it is stored somewhere down here.'

John walked forward to match his father's stride. 'You're kidding.'

'I wish I was, son.' Jeff paused as Virgil moved past them and seized the handle of a large metal case, pulled it bodily from the shelf to the floor. Virgil unlatched the container and opened the lid wide on its hinges. Inside, Braman lay swaddled in foam padding, his copper body inert and flimsy, a contraption hardly capable of bringing a country to its knees.

'Are you sure, Dad?' Virgil shook his head. 'Braman always seemed so…'

'What?' said Jeff.

'Stupid,' John supplied.

'Pointless.' Virgil looked at his father. 'And what about Brains... Gary Ross?' he corrected, the name sounding foreign on his tongue.

'What about him?' Jeff knelt on the concrete floor and wrestled at Braman's heavy bulk. 'Give me a hand. We need to turn this thing over.'

'Well, he's – ' Virgil closed his mouth, slid his hands between the foam and Braman's cool metal body.

'He's a fugitive,' John filled in. 'From the United States Government. And this,' he continued as he helped heave Braman out of the case, 'is government property. A secret weapon. A _stolen_ weapon. Dad,' John said soberly, pausing all three men in their labour. 'For the last nine years you've been harbouring a fugitive. _We've_ been harbouring a fugitive. Not to mention _this_,' he pointed at Braman sprawled awkwardly half-in and half-out of his box. His voice lowered, became urgent. 'Do you know what the penalty is for – '

'Of course I know.' Jeff continued to tug at Braman. 'Help me turn him over.' All three heaved awkwardly at the robot until Braman spilled suddenly out of his box. 'What the hell was I supposed to do? Brains came to me for help. And I needed…' He paused as they rolled Braman onto his stomach.

'You needed him,' John completed the statement as Braman settled face down on the floor.

'No. International Rescue needed him.' Jeff knelt on one knee and carefully removed Braman's back panel. 'It's complicated. I'd approached Brains numerous times to work for the corporation, but then the military got to him. Not even I could match the money they were throwing at him.'

Virgil squatted close by his father. 'Brains never seemed the sort to care about money.'

'He doesn't.' Jeff reached into his back pocket. 'But military money comes with resources. And a man like that needs a _lot_ of resources.'

Jeff carefully unfolded a sheet of lined notepaper and handed it to John. 'Brains left instructions in case anything like this… well. In case.' He worked free one of Braman's inner circuit boards, paused and looked up at John. 'I'm going to need your help.'

* * *

Tereshchenko waited patiently as his officers hustled Scott and Brains to their feet and backed them up against the wall, annoyed that there was always the struggle, the necessity for violence. Pissed that in all his years of entertaining guests, none of them had ever felt inclined towards cooperation. Tracy, in particular, seemed uncommonly recalcitrant, despite his recent beating. Unlike his friend Ross, who staggered himself brokenly to his feet and turned his hollow eyes toward the ground.

Tereshchenko stifled a smirk as guns were drawn, the butt of one colliding with Tracy's already bruised face. His lips closed around his cigarette as Tracy sagged back against the wall with the argument knocked out of him, sucked hard on the tobacco as his eyes drifted from Tracy's face to his chest, lingered on the butterfly of blood that spread its wings wet across the captain's shirt. He frowned, not remembering that dark blot from the interrogation. Tereshchenko's eyes slid to the grinning guards. He would have to talk to somebody about that.

The general waved the guards away and stepped closer to the Americans, saw now that Tracy's face was grey beneath the bruising, all the life in him drained out to stain his clothes. No matter.

'Your father is a very cooperative man,' Tereshchenko said to Tracy as he removed the cigarette from his lips, dropped it sizzling into the thin puddle at his feet. 'He has agreed to hand over Project Razer.'

'No…' Ross murmured as he leant shakily against the wall, fumbled with his torn fingers for support against the stone.

'You seem surprised, Dr Ross.' Tereshchenko turned his attention towards the scientist. 'But you must remember, Jeff Tracy is a business man. He well understands the nature of supply and demand.'

'And after my father supplies your demands,' Tracy attempted to step forward, fell weakly back against the wall. 'Then what?'

The smile faded from Tereshchenko's face. He glanced at the captain's bloodied shirt, then moved towards to the door.

'_Then what?'_

Tereshchenko stopped, but didn't turn around. 'I won't need you anymore.'

'And Dr Ross?'

'Unfortunately for Dr Ross,' Tereshchenko inclined his head and displayed his Slavic profile, bared his teeth in a wolf-like grin, 'I will be needing him for a little bit longer.'


End file.
